Scattered Ashes
by PetertheChameleon
Summary: As the War comes to an end and nations are left in ashes, the Fire Nation alone feels no victory. Short series of OneShots on the futures of the Fire Nation people. Future Fic, OneShots, OCs.
1. Home

**Disclaimer:** Avatar: The Last Airbender is the sole property of its creators and Nickelodean. I'm not making any profit on this, nor will I even garner a "Hey, remember that one fic?"

…though that'd be really cool

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The hills were green, dotted with thrashing trees, their fragrance heavy on the summer wind. A river that often looked mud brown had caught the sky just right, and the pastures blazed as if a swath of sun cut across them.

The land rolled under the wind, crests of grassy waves climbing the hill toward her, and she felt as if the ground were really moving. As if she were again on the open sea that had brought her there as a young child, to her home.

It was her home, no matter how she had arrived. Clutching her father's sleeve as he smiled down at her, his thin black mustache curving around his chin. The first few years had been difficult, and they had struggled to build a new life in the hostile world. But her father's reassuring smile on that scary boat ride always calmed her, even when his smile had eventually become nothing more than a memory. And now she stood on the hill of the village that her father helped build, looking out on a world that had once more turned hostile.

"Mommy." She felt a tug on her sleeve and looked down on the black-headed child. His eyes were red and confused, thin trails of dirt on his cheeks and under his nose. "Mommy, Dad says we have to go now."

Despite his pleas, she felt as if her legs were rooted to the earth. How could she leave her home? All of their blood, many of their lives, buried in the soil that had turned so fruitful under their care. Perhaps, she had argued with her husband, perhaps they will let us stay. They'll see what we have done, and they'll know that this is our home now.

Darling, he said. This isn't our home any more.

That was the day the news came. Fire Lord Ozai's death. Princess Azula's surrender. Given how unreliably information traveled that summer, they couldn't be sure exactly when it happened. Nor could they be sure when the Earth Kingdom would respond. But as the soldiers were recalled for their final mission, it slowly dawned on them that they would be alone in finding a solution. They would either wait for the Earth Kingdom to come, or they would head back to the Fire Nation. Back home.

"Mommy, they've loaded the wagons," her second-born whispered, giving her sleeve another, more urgent tug. "I don't want them to leave us."

She let the wind blow through her hair for one more moment, breathing in the land as if tasting it for the first time. It would also be her last, and she savored it. She would turn her back on the scene, on the mottled hills with their terraced farms, on that mud-brown river where she had scattered her father's ashes, and set her sights on something further West.

It was enough to make her weep. But she closed her hand around her child's, and gave him a smile that made the tears curl around her lips. Her father had left his home once to give her a new life, and she would do the same for her family. All they should ever remember was her smile, and not the trip that would take them away from the only world they'd known.

Somewhere out West, an ocean rolled like grass on a hill. And maybe beyond that would finally be home.

**

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Author's Note: **While watching Return to Omashu again, it suddenly dawned on me that the defeat of the Fire Nation wouldn't be that simple. It never is for the losing side of a war. This will be a handful of drabbles examining the fate of the Fire Nation citizens after the fall of Ozai -- their uncertain present and cloudy future, as well as their trials in picking up the pieces.


	2. The Ships

**Disclaimer:** Avatar: The Last Airbender is the sole property of its creators and Nickelodeon. The only thing I'm getting out of this is some good fun.

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They'd seen the ships, alright. Unnatural ships – wooden ships far bigger than their own fishing boats. He knew something was up then, and the other men mumbled about it as they hauled in the nets.

"They're headed to the Big Island, I suppose."

"Wonder what they're about."

What followed was strange -- a darkening of the sky that spooked the water sloths and startled the women. Some of the local soldiers complained about being unable to firebend during those few hours, but they never really had much use for bending so nobody really cared. Shortly after, the soldiers all left. They never said why.

He suspected there was trouble. They all did. They'd seen enough trouble for enough generations to know when something was in the air. It mingled with the salty western winds and caught against the mountain range, clouding the townsfolk's minds just as well as a building storm front.

But the week went on as before, early mornings spent casting their nets and late evenings mending them. Only the women seemed to voice their concerns, throwing guarded looks at the kids as they did so.

"I heard that Ozai was killed, and the Avatar, too."

He looked up from the net across his knee and removed the pipe stem from the well-worn notch in his tooth. "You've heard no such thing, wife. No one's heard anything. Not for days now."

"You'll burn yourself if you keep swinging that bowl around."

He grunted and clenched the pipe in his mouth again. The night wore on.

Trouble only came to their shores when the supply boats stopped. No more spices, and the women complained loudly. The fine Earth Kingdom salt they had to replace with good old-fashioned sea salt, and some took to growing what few herbs they could in the rocky ground. But it was no volcanic soil like on the main island, and soon there were no fruits or vegetables, either. The women bemoaned themselves, and he had to hush his wife several times on the matter. After all, they were just vegetables. The ocean gave them everything they needed.

The lamp oil soon ran out, and they resorted to using koi-fish oil. It didn't burn quite as brightly as the processed fuel of the mainland, and left a far less pleasant smell. Then the paper began to disappear, and they had to make due during devotionals at the temple. There was no more fabric to make clothes, and on many a night, his net would grow a little shorter during the mending.

But few words were spoken on the matter among the fishermen. What could they say? If the ships didn't run, then the ships didn't run. The men pushed on, trying to survive the best they could.

When the boats sprang leaks, they tried to fix them with the little pitch they had, and when a boat was too badly damaged, the owner'd scrap the wood for other men to use. Some villagers were left without livelihoods, and they had to band together to help out neighbors whose traps had just been smashed beyond repair on the reefs.

"I heard that Prince Zuko has given up the country. I heard that there's no one to take over. That there's no more ships coming."

"You heard no such thing." He began to put his pipe between his teeth, then remembered that the fire leaves had run out weeks ago. "The ships will come again. Sure as the tide, they'll come again." And with a final glance at the oil lamp's fading light, he went back to work on his net.


	3. Different

**Disclaimer:** Avatar: The Last Airbender is the sole property of its creators and Nickelodeon. The only thing I'm getting out of this is some good fun.

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"What's that noise?" He pressed his face against the bars, wrapping his hands around the cool steel. It felt natural, more familiar than the cold of the steppes where he'd lived before. A place he hadn't seen in many years, and he sometimes wonder if he hadn't simply made up.

At this point, other prisoners had mimicked him. He couldn't see their neighboring cells, but he could hear their muffled shuffling. The visual forms he'd put to those invisible people sprung to mind, and he could see them clearly, dirty faces peering into the flame-lit corridor with similar confusion. Slowly, their voices rose over the quiet crackle of the torches.

"Guard! What's going on?" "Hey, Sinzu! Anyone seen Sinzu?"

There it was again. An explosion that echoed through the chambers, rattling the walls and shaking loose rock from the ceiling. Dust filled the air and obscured the firelight. One of the prisoners gave an excited cry – or maybe it was him? He'd long ago lost the ability to distinguish himself from the sparse furnishings of his cell.

"It's an earthquake!" someone shouted, and the murmurings of the other prisoners rose into yells. "It can't be an earthquake!" "Is it the Earth Kingdom?"

It couldn't be the Earth Kingdom. They'd heard the guards say that the Earth Kingdom had fallen. That the Avatar had been murdered while on the run, a criminal to the world at large.

And that was one thing they all understood.

"We'll be buried alive!" someone else cried, probably the new prisoner. The man was right – the prison was underground. But what he didn't realize was that they'd been buried alive years ago.

So this strange turn of events was welcome – a sign that they weren't yet dead. For if something unusual could happen – if they could recognize that it was happening – then maybe there was a chance everything would change. His grip on the bars tightened as hope, an unfamiliar concept, once more crept through his chest.

A red-robed figure sprinted through the dust motes, causing them to swirl behind him.

"Sinzu, wait!" he shouted and the figure obeyed him, though a hundred similar cries echoed through the corridor. The black-bearded man paused, staring at him with foreign eyes. "What's happening, Sinzu?"

"An Earth Kingdom force, from the north," the firebender managed weakly, and he suddenly realized why his eyes looked so strange. Sinzu was terrified.

The look of terror on another man's face somehow reminded him that there could be a reason to be afraid. Until then, difference was all he could register. And anything different had to be good. But now, he knew, there was something else that 'different' could be.

"Sinzu, open these doors," he said hurriedly. It was already too late. The ground shook again, and Sinzu shook even more, and within a moment he was gone. "Sinzu! Come back!"

The men's cries were also growing as the guard disappeared, awareness supplanting any excitement they'd felt. He had always thought that the enemy of his enemy had to be his friend. But in reality, every Fire Nation citizen was an enemy to the Earth Kingdom.

They were just Fire Nation citizens who were already conveniently locked up.

So the explosions changed to distant screams, and then to closer ones. And their hope changed to fear, and then to resignation.

After a time, the Earth Kingdom soldiers arrived. Some of the prisoners stayed calm, others begged for their lives. He just stared at those faces. Those beautifully different faces.

He cherished his unknown fate. His changed providence. And if he would be buried alive for real, he at least knew he'd been alive before.

At that moment, he no longer belonged to a world of torchlight and cold bars.


	4. The Game

**Disclaimer:** Still don't own Avatar. That's Nickelodeon and its creators Bryan Konietzco and Michael Di Martino. Still not making any money on it. See above for who's doing that. On with the story…

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His business was war.

Some men live off the land, others live by their hands. He lived by those same men dying. It was a family business, passed on from father to son like his premature grey hair or the strange back pain he'd get whenever he was on his feet too long. Even his slender fingers were a gift from his dad.

Fingers meant to craft the murder of thousands, his father might say. His father had a way of being profound like that.

That was something he had not inherited – an overzealous moral philosophy. And so he didn't spend sleepless nights haunted by the weapons he created during the day. After all, war is a business. In order for someone to profit, someone has to lose. It was how the world worked, again as his father would say. And you could either live with it or die by it.

Those had been the rules of business for as long as he remembered. Yet when his assistant entered the development area, carrying that crumpled scroll to his cluttered work bench, he didn't anticipate how the game had changed. With almost absent-minded interest, he looked up from the blue-prints and took the message.

The assistant's face said far more than the scroll ever could.

He had to admit, he was awed by the Avatar's power – his single-handed ability to destroy a century of technology and warcraft with only some nice footwork and a lemur. But he was not in the business to admire his competitor; in fact, he was not in business at all, any more.

Without job or home, he saw now what he'd never seen before; the moral compass his father never gave him somehow surfaced. And that night, as he ushered his family, hidden by Earth Kingdom clothes, into their private carriage, his thoughts turned to the hundreds of thousands of people he surely killed. To the fact that even if Fire Nation soldiers were given pardons, he never would be.

Life, just like war and business, is an all-or-nothing game. One lives by a gamble that this venture will pan out – that by investing everything you have, you will eventually strike big. And perhaps, if he was lucky, somewhere along the way would be another prospect – another future that required slender fingers and the ability to ignore ramifications.

But tonight, he cradled his daughter in his lap and looked out the window at the fading compound, its smoke-stacks now empty. The war was over, and with it the only life he'd ever had.

As his father would have said, in life – just like in business – there are consequences. Equal and opposite reactions. The goal is always to be on top when it eventually bottoms out. Now he realized there was no top. Life – just like war or business – is a game that everyone loses by playing too long or too poorly. And everyone inevitably does.

So when the fight is lost, when your work is finished, when there is nothing you have left but your thoughts and your honor, then the only thing that matters anymore is how you conducted yourself on the field.

What matters is how you played the game.

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**Author's Note:** Wow. You are all friggin _awesome_. I had no idea I'd have such an outpouring of encouragement/support. As I've told several of you wonderful, wonderful reviewers, I didn't think this fic would ever have any reviews. So please let it be known I'm in love with you all.

On another note, I'm afraid all the chapters are pretty dark. I really am trying to think of a happy one to break up the monotony of angst, but sadly, the one-shot above _was_ my happy one. I'll give it another go next week. Also, I'm assuming that the Mechanist is not the only one building weapons. Because that would not be utilizing full Fire Nation capability. Also, this takes place after the War has ended, but I'm leaving _how_ it ended pretty vague. After all, none of these people live in the Fire Nation Capital, so all they know are rumors and fifth-hand news.


	5. Plans

**Disclaimer:** Don't own Avatar or anything related to it. So I don't own, like, three words mentioned in this fic. Those three words are owned by Michael Di Martino, Bryan Konietzko, and Nickelodeon. But anyone is welcome to Anonymous Farmer #2. Nickelodeon probably won't mind.

**Random Note**: The other title of this chapter was "In Knowing" and I'm still torn over what would've been the best title.

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The war was won!

He drank himself under the table that night. Perhaps he should've stayed home with his family, but he knew there would be crying. And though he loved them, he knew he would cry, too.

So he celebrated the bravest way he knew, and drank with the men who had already lost their sons to the war. Tomorrow, they could face the future. Tonight, they would toast the one, resounding truth. It was over.

The next day, he didn't hug his son as he had planned. There was no need, after all. The war was done, and his son wouldn't leave. Instead, he gave his kid a smile, a rough pat on the back, and handed him the yoke. "Hitch up the team, we have fields to plow."

Those were the happiest weeks of his life. Ever since his boy was born, he'd dreaded the future. A future that had been his own past, when he was a soldier instead of a father. Now, though, his son's destiny lay open, determined only by his whim. And his son beamed at him with the eyes of a child who hadn't yet lived.

How short those weeks. How ominous the new rumors from the islands; the Avatar marched triumphant through the Capital. Azula imprisoned in New Ozai. The men gathered at the local inn once more, though there were no celebratory toasts. Instead, they stared into their cups as they waited for news – for the one traveler who would be able to tell them: when is my son coming home?

He knew it even before he walked through the door of his home that night. Something in the subdued lamplight, the shadows on the window lattice. Something in it all told him that his plans for tomorrow were done. His wife looked up at him with wet cheeks, and his son looked up at him with the eyes of a man who'd sealed his fate.

"I'm going, Dad. They need me."

A soldier thinks that when the war is done, he can lay down his sword and rest. But he knew now the truth of that. One, resounding truth. The future of an endless war is less grim than the future of a war that's already lost.

He hugged his son, gave him his old armor and words they both knew meant nothing: "Come home soon. We have fields to plow."


	6. The Missing

**Disclaimer:** Don't own Avatar or anything related to it. Which actually may not even apply to this fic, this time around. But there's definitely something in here owned by Michael Di Martino, Bryan Konietzko, and Nickelodeon. If you're bored at work or school, you are more than welcome to comb the fic looking for it.

* * *

He was crying and she was numb. She'd been numb nearly since she dropped her mother's hand three days before, her parents swallowed in a sea of stinking bodies and broken hopes.

Sure, there had been tears at first. The same kind of tears that now made trails down her little brother's face. But then there was just numbness, and she embraced it with all the strength remaining in her twelve-year-old heart. He needed her now, after all. And Mom had said not to cry.

They had wandered the ferry dock the night they were lost, huddling close to each other for warmth and protection. And every pair of empty eyes skimmed over the two lost children, looking for the things that they had lost, too. But no one was missing them.

Food off the street, nights in wood piles that radiated heat, and only the elephant-rats seemed to notice they existed at all. Every day, they would renew their search. Every day, it had been fruitless, and a knot burned next to hunger in her stomach.

_Maybe they've left on the ferry for the Fire Nation. Maybe they're at Gran's house, waiting._

"I hurt," the boy had sobbed that first day, holding his own stomach, and her heart broke for him.

"I hurt," the boy sobbed the second day, and she just wanted him to shut up. She was hungry, too. And scared, and tired, but she wasn't allowed to cry. So instead of sadness, she had anger.

Anger for the tiny thing that clung to her even as he begged for their mother. Anger that she was thrown in this situation, barely more than a child herself, and that her mother had said that she couldn't cry.

So much anger that the day she found the numbness, she had told her sniffling brother that they would head home on the ferry in the morning. She assured him that when they were with Gran, Mom and Dad would be there, too. They were looking for them on the ferry.

He was too sad to care. But she knew it wasn't him she was trying to console.

And as they stumbled through the sea of bodies just as they had three days before, she still searched vainly for two familiar faces. Just as before, numb, uncaring faces were all she found. Trailing behind her, her brother tugged tiredly on her hand, his tears now reduced to hiccups.

How sweaty his hand had become, both sticking and sliding against her palm. How grateful she would be just to _breathe, _and cry, and feel warm again. Even without thinking, she felt her grip on him loosen, felt his sweaty fingers slip out of hers. It would only take seconds to lose him, and then there would be no reason left to feel anything at all.

"Sissy," her brother mumbled, so low that she could barely hear him in the crowd, "I miss Mommy."

Clutching his hand even tighter, she began to cry.

**

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A/N**: Something about children suffering just kills me. So I invite more tender-hearted readers, such as myself, to believe that she and her brother found their parents either just before boarding the ferry or just after arriving at their grandmother's. And there were hugs and kisses and rainbows.

ETA in mention of the Fire Nation. It's small, but the narrator's 12, lost, and hungry. She wouldn't even think about it. Rest assured, though, this occurs during the mass exodus back to the Fire Nation.


	7. War

**Disclaimer**: You've pretty much got it down at this point. Don't own Avatar or anything related to it. Which means that most of this fic, in its glorious ambiguity, is mine. But I'm feeling charitable, so I donate the whole caboodle to the owners of Avatar, Michael Di Martino, Bryan Konietzko, and Nickelodeon. After you guys sell this fic for millions, could you at least mention me in the byline? Lotsalove – PetertheChameleon.

* * *

"The Fire Lord is defeated. All units stand down."

There it was. The last order they would ever receive as soldiers in the great, Imperial Fire Nation Army. It was almost like a dream. One he thought he might've had before, during those unbearably cold nights in the Southern Ranges or the miserably hot evenings inland of the mining towns. Something he could've wished for, had there been time between endless drills and even longer marches.

Now, though, the dream had become a reality, and the reality a nightmare.

They were obligated to give the order to their men. The captain, his commanding officer, sat on the back of his komodo-rhino – the very symbol of their home country – as he read it in a loud, steady voice.

"All units stand down."

The message meant something different for everyone. Some were relieved, still recalling that same dream he'd dreamt so often. Some were terrified, their thoughts to families who'd not yet grown faceless in their memories.

But many were like him – empty. What did they have, if they didn't have war? Their pasts were filled with death, now pointless. Their futures filled with uncertainty. And with their present robbed from them, the only thing worth fighting for was now only worth running from.

And so many did run. They ran away from the threat of the Earth Kingdom, or they ran toward their homes. They ran in defeat, or they ran out of fear. They ran with the knowledge that the Avatar, triumphant where so many others had failed, was now in charge of their fates. He didn't blame them for running, in the end. If the only thing remaining to him hadn't been his oath to the Fire Nation, he might have run too.

That morning when he awoke to a sweltering breeze and a morbidly quiet camp, he noticed something was off. And he discovered in the course of a stale breakfast and an even staler debriefing that his captain had deserted his post. Those were the most trying moments, when a handful of lieutenants with only a decade or so of combined experience behind them found themselves in charge.

And now he stood in front of the remnants of what used to be his company, their silent pleas for direction deafening. Where were the stirring words of their once-great Nation? Where was the spirit that drove them to the heights of victory and beyond the agonies of battle? Clearing his throat, he spoke in a tremulous voice that threatened to float away on the heavy coastal air.

"You have been ordered to stand down. But you stand here now, with me. Men, we have nothing left. Our homes are gone, our way of life destroyed. All that you have loved is now like ash in the wind. Many of your numbers have run. You may look around and no longer see certain faces. They have chosen their paths – they have seen the futility of our cause and have returned home to find something that they can fight for. But I think you all know as well as I that there is nothing to fight for anymore."

His words were somber, demoralizing, and the dark mood of the company threatened to suffocate them far quicker than the humid sea-breeze. "You have been ordered to stand down. But you stand here now, with me. Men, there is no more victory. Everything we do today will have no consequence on tomorrow.

"Yet I swore many years ago an oath to my nation – an oath I know that you took, as well. This oath said that, though we might struggle in vain, our suffering would be for a greater ideal. I still believe this. I said we have nothing to fight for, but we can still fight for ourselves. And those who might live will one day say that we found honor in serving that which we hold true. That we did not let defeat dictate the end of _our_ battle. We had purpose, and though we might lose the war, we will never give up the fight for a dream much greater than our efforts here.

"If you run, you will be alive tomorrow. But what will you be living for? We all have different reasons for our lives here – some by choice, some by force. And only you can know if that reason is good enough to stand ready at our last, and greatest, battle. I think, though, you have already answered that question yourselves. You have been ordered to stand down. But you stand here now, with me. You realize, as well as I, that we have something to fight for: our honor, our memory, our dreams. So let us now fight for them, and let the spirits take what we refuse to give."

Their shouts swelled up the hill, as if thousands gathered where only hundreds did now. And as the Earth Kingdom army descended on them with tanks and rocks, they held their ground. To the last dying man, they earned that final honor for their nation.

They fought for their unrealized dream.


	8. The Library

**Disclaimer**: Don't anything in this story, not making any money. Those rights belong to Michael di Martino, Bryan Konietzco, and Nickelodeon. This is essentially an exercise in futility, mostly to avoid doing something important, like studying for exams.

This is way more fun, anyhow.

* * *

Her grandfather had stories.

A thousand stories that he told a thousand times over, seated next to the fire as her grandmother embroidered during those balmy summer evenings. And she would fall asleep listening to her grandfather's deep, steady voice, her mind drifting away to distant lands of flying men and tiger-seals.

They were her grandfather's past, just as her grandfather was now her past. And so she held those stories close to her heart as she grew up into a world far less vivid yet far more real. What had happened to the sky bison? The men who shifted with the sands? The vast walls of an impenetrable city that housed an ancient king?

One of her grandfather's many stories – one memory of his long past – was a library. A Great Library, which he said contained every story ever known to man. She supposed such a place couldn't really exist, but she knew her grandfather had also been a librarian in the days before the War. And she wondered if maybe the story of the Great Library had actually been his own.

What had been his repository of knowledge was also now past, destroyed in a blaze that had then spread over the lands, devouring tiger-seals and sand-men alike. After that, all her grandfather had were stories. Every scroll was then a memory in an old man's heart.

And now they were her memories, which she tucked away in her mind for fear that a fire might try to find them there. For years, she had refused to write them down. Even when she became Master Librarian to the Imperial House, she obediently destroyed the stories they asked to be destroyed and silently kept the ones that they never knew about.

Then, one day, the stories came to life. Sky bison. Waterbenders. A little boy, awesome and terrible, yet not much older than she when her grandfather gave her his memories. They filled the air and covered the ground, and though she cowered with her family in terror of these actualized myths, she also felt relieved that the stories had somehow survived.

She now sits next to the hearth, her grandchildren huddled on bamboo mats just outside its light. And as her husband brings in coals to feed the fire, she no longer hides from the flames. She whispers the stories that she had never been allowed to share, tells the tales that she had nearly lost to the past.

These stories are hers. And like her grandfather before her, she has thousands.

**

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A/N**: Finally, an up-beat chapter! Took me long enough to think one up. So as I'm getting closer to the end, I thought I'd mention what I've been going for with these one-shots. I've been trying _really_ hard to give each story a distinctive voice (and feel like I've only achieved it once, with "The Ships"). Unfortunately, my writing style is too pervasive, and everything sounds the exact same to me. Still, I've tried to put in some variation. For instance, chapter 4 is told by a guy who lives his entire life by analogies and platitudes, because it's easier than actually having to face things. And in this chapter, the narrator hides in a dream-world, so she can barely recount anything except in terms of metaphor and hyperbole.

I know – if I'm a good enough writer, that should come across on its own. And if it doesn't, I need to go back to the drawing (or writing) board. But I'm getting so close to the end, I at least want to point out that I _was_ trying for something in all this, even if I failed.


End file.
